Younger German voters disproportionately backing the far-right AfD

Younger German voters, in particular, flocked to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), helping power the party to historic results in a pair of eastern state elections on Sunday, according to exit polls.

In both Thuringia and Saxony, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 overwhelmingly backed the AfD, which in both states has been branded a far-right extremist group by domestic intelligence agencies.

The AfD on Sunday won 36% of younger voters backed in Thuringia and another 30% in Saxony, according to polling by the research firm Forschungsgruppe Wahlen.

Overall, the AfD placed first in Thuringia with 32.8% and a narrow second place in Saxony with 30.6%.

The centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), which appears likely to lead the next coalition governments in both states, significantly underperformed among younger voters, the pollsters found.

The CDU won in Saxony with 31.9% of the vote, but won only 15% of those under 29 years old. In Thuringia, the CDU placed second with 23.6% - but among younger voters finished tied with the hard-left Die Linke ("The Left") with just 13%.

In Thuringia and Saxony, polls put support for the AfD among younger voters up dramatically since the most recent state elections in 2019.

Researcher Rüdiger Maas, who has studied the AfD's appeal among young people, credited the party's adept use of social media, cultivation of influencers and focus on issues like immigration that often go viral.

Maas said that it's also a sign of the party's normalization among younger people, who are less likely than older Germans to view the AfD as a repellent extremist group or a threat to democracy.

He said the traditional division of the political landscape into left and right is becoming less important for young voters. He found in a recent study that many young people who describe themselves as political centrists nevertheless cast ballots for the AfD.

"As a result, these extreme parties are not slipping to the margins," Maas said.

He said that fewer young people report that the AfD is considered taboo or a fringe extremist group among their circles of friends.

"Many young people have told us: 'The far-right won't hurt us, they're not evil.' It's older people in particular that seem to recognize this danger," Maas said, adding that he views the phenomenon as a "completely underestimated" factor.

Maas said he expects similar results when voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg go to the polls to elect a new state parliament on September 22.

Young people, fuelled by social media, tend to perceive the AfD as a party that is unfairly disadvantaged by others, while mainstream political parties like the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) have difficulty finding traction online.

According to Maas, other parties would only have a chance to challenge the AfD for the youth vote if they invested a lot of money quickly and also relied on high-reach personalities online.